1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Media Independent Handover (MIH). More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for performing an MIH registration between a Media Independent Handover Function (MIHF) of a serving network and MIHFs of candidate networks.
2. Description of Related Art
An Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.21 standard is advancing international standardization of a Media Independent Handover (MIH) for the purpose of providing service continuity and seamless handover between heterogeneous networks and thereby providing user convenience with a mobile terminal.
An MIH registration procedure should be performed to enable communication between a Media Independent Handover Function (MIHF) of a mobile terminal and an MIHF of a serving network. In this instance, the serving network indicates a network which directly connects with the mobile terminal.
When the MIHF of the mobile terminal transmits an MIH registration request to the MIHF of the serving network, the MIHF of the serving network transmits a response to the MIH registration request to the MIHF of the mobile terminal. Through the above operation, the MIH registration procedure between the mobile terminal and the serving network is performed.
A conventional MIH registration procedure should deregister a registered identifier and register a new identifier when an access point (AP), connected between the MIHF of the mobile terminal and the MIHF of the serving network, is changed. Specifically, every time an AP is changed, a registration procedure of deregistering a registered identifier and registering a new identifier should be repeated. Accordingly, it generally takes a great amount of time to perform the MIH registration between the MIHF of the mobile terminal and the MIHF of the serving network.
Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus which can define a registration procedure between networks and thereby perform communication between the networks.